Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/667

No. 6.] myself. And wherever I find consciousness of relation, of connectedness, even incipient, I project myself upon that consciousness, with a view to awaking in it the consciousness of universal connectedness" (p. 121).

The ideal is a society of unique personalities in which "the unique difference of each shall be such as to render possible the correlated unique differences of all the rest" (p. 116). Each infinitesimal member is indispensable, has worth; "a duplicate would be superfluous." Professor Adler's language often has an extremely individualistic ring: I must help others in order to save myself in the sense that I cannot achieve uniqueness without "injecting streams of dynamic energy" into my fellow-beings. One sometimes gets the impression that the universal order is a mere means of bringing out one's individual uniqueness, and that the chief end of man is to be different from everybody else. This, however, is not the real meaning of the theory. Since uniqueness has absolute ethical worth I must achieve it in myself; but I must also seek to elicit it in others, I must work to bring about an interrelated whole of unique beings, I must arouse the consciousness of such an ideal in others. "A virtuous act is one in which the ends of self and of the other are respected and promoted jointly" (p. 214). The difference in method which distinguishes his system from others, Professor Adler tells us, consists in the joint pursuit of the two ends, that of the other and that of the self (p. 220; see also pp. 148, 190, 222). The system is no more egoistic than is Aristotle's, Kant's, or Green's. It is, however, individualistic in the sense that the object of highest worth is the unique individual. "The ethical quality is that quality in which a man is intrinsically unique" (p. 142). "The self is precious on its own account" (p. 214). We must learn to prize distinctive difference above uniformity or sameness. "I do not of course deny that there are certain uniformities, chiefly negative, in moral conduct, but I have come to think that the quality of moral acts consists in the points in which they differ rather than those in which they agree. The ideally ethical act, to my mind, is the most completely individualized act" (p. 24). The doctrine of uniqueness has been taught before, in various forms,—by the Greek Sophists, by the Romanticists, by Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Mill, Emerson, and others,—and it needs to be emphasized, particularly, perhaps, in a democracy, as a protest against the tendency to make everybody like everybody else. We are led to ask, however, whether mere difference has any more worth than mere sameness. There is a uniqueness, to be sure, which is indefeasible: each individual is a person, a self, an ego, a